The Maharashtra government on Wednesday (17 February) approved an extension to the 31 km Pune Metro rail network corridor by addition of metro route from PCMC to Nigdi on the Pimpri Chinchwad – Swargate Line, reports Financial Express.
With three new stations at Chinchwad, Akurdi and Nigdi, the 16.5 km PCMC to Swargate line will be extended by 4.4 km from Pimpri to Nigdi as an elevated line.
A depot, parking bays, multimodal transport integration and pedestrian bridge are part of the extension project which was earlier estimated to cost around Rs 1,050 crore.
The Maharashtra Metro Rail Corporation, which is a 50:50 jointly owned company of the government of India and Government of Maharashtra, is the executing agency of Rs 11,420 crore Pune Metro project.
The citizens groups had been campaigning for the extension as the first DPR prepared for Pune Metro had excluded this densely populated stretch in the Pimpri Chinchwad.
In her Budget speech on 1 February, Finance Minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman said that the government aims to raise the share of public transport in urban areas through expansion of metro rail networks.
The government also announced central funding of Rs 5,976 crore for Nagpur metro phase II and Rs 2,092 crore for Nasik metro.
Currently a total of 702 km of metro is operational and over 1,016 km of metro lines are under construction in 27 cities across the country.